Sat, 06 Feb 2010

I had the opportunity to participate in a focus group on NASA's new
"citizen science" project, called Moon Zoo, with a bunch of other
fellow lunatics, amateur astronomers and lunar enthusiasts.

Moon Zoo sounds really interesting. Ordinary people will
analyze high-resolution photos of the lunar surface: find out how many
boulders and craters are there. I hope it will also include more
details like crater type and size, rilles and so forth, though that
wasn't mentioned. These are all tasks that are easy for a human and
hard for a computer: perfect for crowdsourcing.
Think Galaxy Zoo for the moon.
The resulting data will be used for planning future lunar missions as
well as for general lunar science.

It sounds like a great project and I'm excited about it. But
I'm not going to write about Moon Zoo today -- it doesn't
exist yet (current estimate is mid-March), though there is a
preliminary
PDF.
Instead, I want to talk about some of the great ideas that came
out of the focus group.

The primary question: How do we get people -- both amateur astronomers
and the general public, people of all ages -- interested in
contributing to a citizen science project like Moon Zoo?

Here are some of the key ideas:

Make the data public

This was the most important point, echoed by a lot of participants.
Some people felt that many of the existing "citizen science" projects
project the attitude "We want something from you, but we're not going to give
you anything in return." If you use crowdsourcing to create a dataset,
make it available to the crowd.

Opening the data has a lot of advantages:

People can make "mashups", useful sites that display your data
in useful ways or combine it with other data. This can generate
more interest in your project and more contributors.

School groups can work on class projects or science fair projects,
probably contributing more data along the way.

It might help the next generation of scientist get started.

It shows openness and good faith: witness the recent blow-up over
the leaked IPCC emails and the debate over how much climate data has
been kept private.

Projects like
Wikipedia and
Open Street Map,
as well as Linux and the rest of the open source movement,
show how much an open data model can inspire contributions.

Give credit to individuals and teams

People cited the example of SETI@Home, where teams of contributors can
compete to see who's contributed the most. Show rankings for both
individuals and groups, so they can track their progress and maybe
get a bit competitive with other groups. Highlight groups
and individuals who contribute a lot -- maybe even make it a formal
competition and offer inexpensive prizes like T-shirts or mugs.

A teenaged panel member had the great suggestion of making
buttons that said "I'm a Moon Zookeeper." Little rewards like that
don't cost much but can really motivate people.

Offer an offline version

They wanted to hear ideas for publicizing Moon Zoo to groups like
our local astronomy clubs.

I mentioned that I've often wanted to spread the word about Galaxy Zoo,
but it's entirely a web-based application and when I give talks to clubs
or school groups, web access is never an option. (Ironically, the person
leading the focus group had planned to demonstrate Galaxy Zoo to us but
couldn't get connected to the wi-fi at the Lawrence Hall of Science.)

Projects are so much easier to evangelize if you can download
an offline demo.

And not just a demo, either. There should be a way to download a
real version, including a small data set. Imagine if you could grab a
Moon Zoo pack and do a little classifying whenever you got a few spare
minutes -- on the airplane or train, or in a hotel room while traveling.

Important note: this does not mean you should write a separate
Windows app for people to download. Keep it HTML, Javascript and cross
platform so everyone can run it. Then let people download a local copy
of the same web app they run on your site.

Make sure it works on phones and game consoles

Lots of people use smartphones more than they use a desktop computer
these days. Make sure the app runs on all the popular smartphones.
And lots of kids have access to handheld web-enabled game consoles:
you can reach a whole new set of kids by supporting these platforms.

Offer levels of accomplishment, like a game

Lots of people are competitive by nature, and like to feel they're
getting better at what they're doing. Play to that: let users advance
as they get more experienced, and give them the option of
doing harder projects. "I'm up to level 7 in Moon Zoo!"

Use social networking

Facebook. Twitter. Nuff said.

Don't keep results a secret

Quite a few scientific publications have arisen out of Galaxy Zoo --
yet although most of us were familiar with Galaxy Zoo, few of us
knew that. Why so secretive?
They should be trumpeting achievements like that.

How many times have you volunteered for a survey or study, then
wondered for years afterward how the results came out? Researchers
never contact the volunteers when the paper is finally published.
It's frustrating and demotivating; it makes you not want to volunteer
again. Lots of us sign up because we're curious about the science --
but that means we're also curious about the results.

With citizen science projects, this is particularly easy. Set up a
mailing list or forum (or both) to discuss results and announce when
papers are published. Set up a Twitter account and a Facebook group
to announce new papers to anyone who wants to follow. This is the age of
Web 2.0, folks -- there's no excuse for not communicating.

I don't know if NASA will listen to our ideas. But I hope they do.
Moon Zoo promises to be a terrific project ... and the more of these
principles they follow, the more dedicated volunteers they'll get and
that will make the project even better.